To M. V. Kiseleva, 3 December 1889. Moscow.

Letter to Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva, 3 December 1889, Moscow.

Maria Kiseleva (1847-1921) was a minor writer and the co-owner, with her husband, of the Babkino estate near Voskresensk, where the Chekhov family spent several summers (1885-1887) as tenants/guests. She and Chekhov maintained a long, warmly bantering correspondence; she was also the addressee of his well-known January 1887 letter defending frank/"dirty" subject matter in literature. By December 1889 Chekhov was back in Moscow, recently returned from the period around his brother Nikolai’s death (June 1889) and at work on what would become "A Dreary Story" and other pieces; he was also unwell with influenza at the time of writing.

A short, teasing letter. Prince A. I. Urusov (referred to jestingly as sending "some goose" of an emissary) publishes a hunting journal and had asked Chekhov, through an intermediary, for a short story; Chekhov refused, with mock-grandiose self-comparison to Mount Elbrus as the only other "unattainable height" in Russia. He then recommends Kiseleva to the emissary as a hunting-literate fiction writer, claiming (in jest) that she is consumed with envy of his fame and dreams of a monument to herself. He suggests two possible story titles/ideas – "Ivan Gavrilov" and "The Wounded Elk" – and gives craft advice: treat the wounded-animal subject in a flat, "protocol"/police-report style, without sentimentality, or it will lose its power. He instructs her, if she accepts Urusov’s commission, to demand 80-100 rubles per printer’s signature (list) as her fee – the standard journal rate – framed as a joking postscript she should append. He closes asking whether she is recovering (from illness), reports his own influenza, sends greetings to named family members, and closes with a family greeting from the whole Chekhov household.